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Regulation and the big state are back in vogue

Jason O’Mahony

Scandals over mega-companies and super-profits have handed the initiative to those with interventionist policies

There’s an urban political myth about an Irish minister who used to drive around his constituency with a car boot full of telephones back in the day. He’d distribute the devices to constituents as a sign of his power and favour with a vague promise about how technicians would be along in the coming weeks to connect them.

Sometimes the technicians arrived. There were stories of old dears prominently placing the telephone on display in the hallway, polished to a gleam, as a sign to the other old visiting dears that this was a house with political clout. Sure didn’t the minister himself deliver the phone?

What’s remarkable to a modern audience is the idea that such a practice would be deemed normal, or not…

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